2006_McFarlane_Post-rationalist approach

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Progress in Development Studies 6, 4 (2006) pp. 287305

2006 SAGE Publications 10.1191/1464993406ps144oa

I IntroductionThe relations between knowledge, learningand development are of growing importancein development (see World Bank, 1999;Department for International Development(DFID), 2000; King, 2001; special issue ofDevelopment in Practice, 2002; Wilson, 2002;Hovland, 2003). Mainstream developmentinstitutions are increasingly arguing for the roleof knowledge and learning in the developmentof poor countries. The 1998/99 World Bank

World Development Report (WDR) entitledKnowledge for development, for example,argues that knowledge must be used to alle-viate poverty and contribute to economicgrowth. Numerous statements have beenmade by the Bank claiming that Knowledgehas become the most important factor in eco-nomic development (World Bank, 2002: 7).

However, despite the growth of interest in thisarea since the mid-1990s, key issues have yetto be explored. Most of the recent literature isconcerned with how organizations can andshould manage knowledge (Edwards, 1994;British Overseas NGOs for Development(BOND) 2002, 2003), what organizations cando to enhance innovation and knowledge cre-ation (DFID, 2000), how organizations canbecome learning organizations (Hailey andJames, 2002; Roper and Pettit, 2002) and

how knowledge can be made more available topeople for development purposes (King,2001).1 The focus, then, has been on howknowledge is managed, created and shared.While this review explores questions ofknowledge creation and sharing, it does sowith a critical perspective on the nature ofknowledge and learning in development. This

Knowledge, learning and development:

a post-rationalist approach

Colin McFarlane

Department of Geography, The Open University,

Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK

Abstract: The relations between knowledge, learning and development are of growing

importance in development, but despite the growth of interest in this area since the mid-1990s, key

issues have yet to be explored. This review argues the need to attend to how knowledge andlearning are conceived in development and how they are produced through organizations. Drawing

on mainstream development literature, the review argues that there is a pervasive rationalist

conception of knowledge and knowledge transfer as objective and universal, which has political

implications. By contrast, the review argues for a post-rationalist approach that conceives

development knowledge and learning as partial, social, produced through practices, and both

spatially and materially relational.

Key words: knowledge, learning, rationalism, post-rationalism, World Bank, Slum/ShackDwellers International.


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includes attention to how knowledge andlearning are conceived in development andhow they are produced through organisations.

Literature on mainstream development2 hastended to avoid a rigorous consideration ofknowledge and learning. Even the large litera-

ture on technologies of participation, such asParticipatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), often failsto consider how knowledge and learning areand should be conceptualized, despite con-cerns with involving the knowledge of margin-alized people in development policy andpractices (Chambers, 1997; Holland andBlackburn, 1998; and see cautionary com-ments from Mosse, 1994, 2001 and Mohan,2002). I will argue that there is a need toclosely consider knowledge, learning and

related concepts because the ways in whichthey are conceived and practised play a role inshaping development interventions and analy-sis. The review will explore mainstream devel-opment scholarship and practice beforeconsidering examples from Slum/Shack

Dwellers International (SDI), a transnationalcivil society network working with urbandevelopment issues. There are many ways toexplore questions of knowledge and learning indevelopment, from detailed surveys of partici-

patory technologies to considerations of post-colonial perspectives (see, for instance, Briggsand Sharp, 2004, on conceiving indigenousknowledge). There is not the space in thisreview to explore these diverse literatures;instead, I hope to show how a productive dia-logue can take place around developmentliterature and organizational theory.

The review will begin with a discussion ofhow knowledge and learning are conceived indevelopment policy and practice, arguing thatthere is a pervasive rationalist conception ofknowledge as objective, universal and instru-mental. Any discussion of knowledge andlearning in development cannot ignore theways in which the movement of knowledge isconceived, and I will argue that knowledgetransfer is often conceived as a linear processwhereby untransformed knowledge acts as atechnical solution to a given development

problem. I will then contrast this approachto knowledge and learning by exploring theutility of, broadly cast, a post-rationalist per-spective. This is an approach that conceivesknowledge and learning as partial, social, pro-duced through practices, and both spatially

and materially relational. In this reading,knowledge-in-travel is conceived as caught intranslation, as always open to invention andchange, and as multiple in form and effect.I argue that work in organizational theoryoffers a range of post-rationalist perspectivesthat are useful for considering knowledge andlearning in development, offering one pro-ductive means for advancing these debates indevelopment studies. I will use the SDI analy-sis as a means for illustrating the use of a post-

rationalist approach to knowledge andlearning in development.

SDI is a network of non-governmental(NGO) and community-based organizations(CBOs) working with urban poverty, span-ning 12 countries throughout Asia and Africa.

It is a learning network based around astructure of horizontal exchanges. Theseexchanges involve small groups of the urbanpoor travelling from one urban settlement toanother to share knowledge in what amounts

to an informal learning process. With echoesof mainstream knowledge for developmentstrategies, SDI leaders argue for the centralimportance of knowledge (of the urban poor)for development. SDI seeks to place theknowledge and capacities of the poor at thecentre of development initiatives, andespouse a range of techniques that its leadersdescribe as indispensable to a developmentprocess driven by the knowledge of the urbanpoor. These include a training programme ofexchanges, daily savings schemes, modelhouse building, the enumeration of poor peo-ples settlements and a variety of other tac-tics, some of which will be expanded onbelow. SDI concurs with, for instance, theWorld Bank that knowledge is central todevelopment. However, SDI politicizesknowledge for development by contesting theways in which knowledge is conceived, how it

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is created, how it is communicated and howlearning takes place.

I do not wish to suggest that SDI stands as asimple counterpoint to the World Bank, withthe former always post-rationalistand the lat-ter always rationalist. The particular terrain

of rationalist and post-rationalist perspec-tives explored in this review are not opposite,but different, and individuals at the WorldBank and SDI are, of course, capable of simul-taneously holding versions of both sets of per-spectives. There is no straightforward binarybetween rationalist and post-rationalist. Ona similar register, the paper does not intend toromanticize SDIs work indeed, there arecertainly critics of the politics of its knowledgeinitiatives (McFarlane, 2004). My intention is

to highlight a set of positions that actively workagainst a view of development knowledge asan objective and universal solutionthat can beconceived unproblematically as separate fromcontext and politics, and to use SDI to illustratesome of these positions.

II Creating and conceiving knowledge

and learning

Conceptions of knowledge and learning areoften taken for granted in accounts in develop-

ment studies and mainstream development(Hovland, 2003). While there has been someproblematizing of different types of knowledge,and of the relationship between knowledge andinformation in development studies, there hasbeen little attention to the ontological andepistemological basis of knowledge.3 Thesequestions are important because they containassumptions that affect the politics of develop-ment interventions and analyses. Among main-stream development policy-makers, knowledgecreation is often viewed as taking place in apolitical vacuum (see Mehta, 2001 on theWorld Bank; Wilks, 2001; Stone, 2003).

In much mainstream development litera-ture, knowledge is conceived as travellingbetween bounded territories. This is premisedon a double geography of two inter-relatedassumptions. First, that information andknowledge travel in a linear way. This view of

knowledge transfer is reminiscent of the func-tionalist resource-based theory of the firm(Gherardi, 2000: 213), which claims that thetransfer of knowledge may be accomplishedwithout distortion: to transfer is not to trans-form. The second assumption supports this

belief with a spatial ontology informed by animagination that information and knowledgecirculate globally, and can be applied to withsome alteration for local conditions localplaces, or can work alongside local know-ledge. From discussions of delivering interna-tional best practices to initiatives such as theGlobal Development Network (Stone, 2003),knowledge is often conceived as a technicalentity that can be delivered unchanged as adevelopment solution. This move is an onto-

logical separation between space and place, anEuclidean imagination of the spatiality of glob-alization that separates information/know-ledge out therefrom that in here. This visionperpetuates a NorthSouth divide: poorcountries are to draw on the knowledge of

rich countries in order to develop. As theWorld Bank has argued: With communicationcosts plummeting, transferring knowledge ischeaper than ever . . . Given these advances,the stage appears to be set for a rapid narrow-

ing of knowledge gaps and a surge in economicgrowth and well-being (World Bank, 1999: 2).Knowledge transfer is conceived as instrumen-tal, reducing knowledge itself to a technologythat can be applied, that is, a static entity thatcan be shifted around to do the job of develop-ment: [A] thing that can be produced ortraded, exported or imported (Power, 2003:186). Below, I elaborate on this rationalist ten-dency before going on to outline a broadpost-rationalist approach to knowledge andlearning, the latter of which will focus ontranslation as a key concept.

III Rationalism

The traditional rationalist conception ofknowledge has its resonances in contemporaryconceptions of knowledge formation as a linearprocess, whereby unstructured data are con-verted to structured information, before being

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added to a stock of knowledge that can informwiser beliefs or judgements (Nonaka et al.,2000; Amin and Cohendet, 2004: 18). Thisidealist conception envisions knowledge assomething that can be sent, received, circu-lated, transferred, accumulated, converted

and stored (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000).In mainstream development, knowledge andlearning are commonly viewed through arational lens that frames learning as a cumula-tive process of adding new information toexisting knowledge stacksin a straightforwardway in order to make them more effective.Often the assumption is that all developmentagencies, non-governmental organizations,and think-tanks have to do is improve theirknowledge-management strategies, including

knowledge capture and sharing.The most relevant example in mainstream

development is the World Banks knowledgefor development initiative launched in themid-1990s. The initiative is not an attempt toadd-on particular knowledge-sharing strate-

gies to existing development initiatives. It is, inthe Banks terms, an effort to mainstreamknowledge as a development tool (WorldBank, 2003), and has even been referred toby one senior staff member as a shift in devel-

opment paradigm (Laporte, 2004). It is anattempt to re-imagine development as know-ledge and to encourage staff to think of them-selves as knowledge brokers. This means, forexample, that Bank Country AssessmentStrategies (CASs) should be written with acentral focus on identifying knowledge gaps,detailing ways of delivering the right kinds ofdevelopment knowledge, and building theinstitutional capacities of public, private andcivil society organizations to get to the rightkinds of knowledge and manage it effectively.

The World Bank perceives knowledge as acritical ingredient lacking in poor countries. The1998/99 Knowledge for development WorldDevelopment Report claims (1999: 1): Poorcountries and poor people differ from richones not only because they have less capital butbecause they have less knowledge. Knowledgeis often costly to create, and that is why much

of it is created in industrial countries. For theBank, it is knowledge and not resources thathas become perhaps the most important factordetermining the standard of living more sothan land, than tools, than labor (World Bank,1999: 16, cited in Power, 2003: 185). In the

Banks view, countries that fail to encourageknowledge for development strategies arelikely to fall behind those that succeed inencouraging it(World Bank, 1999: 186, cited inPower, 2003: 186). From the outset, then, theBanks spatial ontology of knowledge for devel-opment makes a political move, despite thepresentation of the initiative as a technicalsolution to a development problem (a knowl-edge gap). Not only is there the problematicclaim that knowledge is the most important

feature in development, it is also assumed thatknowledge must originate in the North. Whilethere are no doubt individuals within the Bankwho recognize flaws and limitations in thisrationalist rubric, in practice the Banks officialposition in its knowledge for development

documentation and initiatives has a significantinfluence internationally in framing how devel-opment problems are constituted and howthe solutions take shape (see, for instance,Mawdsley and Rigg, 2003, on the WDRs).

There is little attempt to define knowledgein the report. The Knowledge for development

WDR instead makes a distinction betweenknowledge about technology and knowledgeabout attributes. Knowledge about technologyrefers to technical know-how around nutri-tion, birth control, software engineering, andaccountancy, and knowledge about attrib-utesrefers to the quality of a product, the dili-gence of a worker, or the creditworthiness of afirm all crucial to effective markets (1999: 1).Incomplete knowledge about attributes resultsin market failure and problems for the poor.Knowledge is conceived as light capable ofenlighteningthe darkness of poverty (WorldBank, 1999: 1). As the Knowledge Bank(Stiglitz, 1998; World Bank, 1999), Mehta(1999: 154) suggests, the Bank attributes toitself a major role in dispelling this darkness ofignorance (see World Bank, 1999: 67). As



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Power (2003: 7277) points out, there areobvious legacies here with Enlightenment idealsand modernist thought of learned modernsguiding the progress of distant others, of knowl-edge as a technology rooted in reason andrationality. The ordering of knowledge along a

NorthSouth divide not only risks marginalizingalternative voices, then, it risks typecasting andrecreating images of the poor as ignorant ordepraved, in urgent need of knowledge andenlightenment(Mehta, 1999: 154).

Knowledge about technology and know-ledge about attributes represent knowledgegaps between the North and the South, andthe Bank highlights ways of reducing thesegaps. Rather than re-creating existing know-ledge (World Bank, 1999: 2), poor countries

are encouraged to acquire knowledge from theNorth through open trade regimes and foreigninvestment, as well as to build on indigenousknowledge. Countries should acquire, absorband communicate knowledge by expandingtheir research base and developing secondary

education, particularly in science and engineer-ing (World Bank, 1999: 2). The WDR arguesthat while orthodox development modelsassume perfect information, poor countries suf-fer more from imperfect information than rich

countries. As imperfect information delete-riously affects institutions and their structures,environmental policies and the broader econ-omy, international institutions and states have aduty to help bridge knowledge gaps. A centralfeature of the Banks rationalism is the concep-tion of knowledge as stacksthat can be shiftedNorth to South to create near-perfect informa-tion. The Bank and the North are framed assenders; the South as receivers (Power,2003: 186), and the process of travel is inciden-tal and direct, occurring without deformation.Knowledge is conceived as universally applica-ble; wherever it goes it can have similar effects.There is an assumption in the WDR thatknowledge can easily be decontextualisedfrom its original source (Mehta, 1999: 154).In the WDR, knowledge for development,Mehta (1999: 154) contends, is defined as sep-arate from the socio-political world within

which it is located. The WDR posits know-ledge as a commoditywithout geography.

The view of knowledge as a commodity isunderpinned by the Banks conception ofknowledge and knowledge transfer as a techni-cal process. In the Banks knowledge initiatives,

knowledge is generally conceived of as techni-cal: [T]he examples highlighted [in the WDR]largely concern technical know-how, softwaretechnology, information technology (Mehta,1999: 156). The key means for knowledgetransfer are, correspondingly, InformationCommunication Technologies (ICTs). ICTsare viewed as both essential means to createknowledge even greater than the knowledgegap is the gap in the capacity to create know-ledge (World Bank, 1999: 2, cited in Power,

2003: 186) and technologies the poor need toknow how to use in order to gain informationto better develop. Communicating know-ledge in the Banks espousal of knowledge fordevelopment refers specifically to what theBank perceives as opportunities for vast

amounts of informationto travel in seconds atan ever-decreasing cost through the conver-gence of computing and telecommunications(World Bank, 1999: 9). Technologies such asmobile telephones and the internet allow for a

greater acquisition and absorption of know-ledge, argues the WDR. The WDR, as Mehta(1999: 156) points out, cites examples such ase-mail being used by small business enterprisesin Vietnam, and Panamanian women who postpictures of their handicraft on their websites.

ICTs are viewed as a key part of the Banksthree main global knowledge initiatives: theDevelopment Gateway, the GlobalDevelopment and Learning Network, and theGlobal Development Network, internet-basednetworks that cost the Bank $60 millionbetween 1997 and 2002 (World Bank, 2003).The Development Gateway, launched in 1999,is an internet portal that gives access to stud-ies, information and trends, allows for groupsand individuals to exchange ideas, and enablescollaboration. It is aimed at governments, pri-vate organizations, civil society groups anddonors, and through it the Bank has supported

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the launch of 44 country-based gateways.In July 2002, the Bank estimated that theGateway provided information on 300 000donor-supported activities worldwide (WorldBank, 2002). The Gateway aims to use ICTsto increase knowledge sharing; enable aid

effectiveness; improve public sector trans-parency; and build local capacity to empowercommunities (Development Gateway, 2003).However, while internet use is in rapid increasein many poorercountries, it remains sporadicand unreliable. When less than 30% of visitorsto the site come from outside the USA (WorldBank, 2003), there is a need to question howeffective the Gateway is in meeting the Banksobjective of sharing knowledge with poorercountries and communities.

The Bank argues that inequities in internetaccess illustrate the need to make such tech-nologies more widely available, and that therate at which internet use is spreading indi-cates that many countries will be able to par-ticipate in ICT-based knowledge strategies in

the near future. However, even if that werethe case and as Mehta (1999: 156) arguesthere is no guarantee that many people inrural Africa, for instance, will get access to theinternet in the foreseeable future the inter-

net is likely to remain secondary to the needsof the poor when compared with tenurerights, food security, water security and theiraccess to institutions and credit, even if it is avehicle to a greater variety of informationabout these same issues. Others have com-mented that an ICT focus often entails a neg-lect of local initiative in the design ofdevelopment efforts and a threat of the ero-sion of indigenous and informal systems due tothe influence of formal, ICT-based, western-oriented information systems (Madon, 1999:257). Moreover, the content of networks suchas the Gateway is far from politically neutral,despite Bank pretensions. Content is con-tributed by some 130 organizations and agroup of content editors within and outsidethe Bank manage different topic areas (WorldBank, 2003: 25). Although the Banks respon-sibility for the Gateway was passed to a

non-profit independent governing body theDevelopment Gateway Foundation in 2001,the Banks role in the Gateway has been asource of criticism.

Wilks (2001) has argued that the BanksTower of Babelon the internet risks present-

ing success stories as possible solutions todevelopment problems, or determining whatconstitutes a development problem. A WorldBank evaluation of the Gateway has notedthat a number of groups and academics objectto what they view as an effective filtering ofknowledge by the Bank, and has called on theBank to be more inclusive of perspectivesbeyond those that are narrowly pro-market(World Bank, 2003: 2526). In addition tobeing a major financial contributor to the

Gateway, the Bank controls decisions overwho becomes President and Treasurer, andhas three seats of an 18-member board all ofwhich has fuelled criticisms of undue influ-ence (World Bank, 2003: 26). In sum, therationalist approach to knowledge and knowl-

edge transfer evidenced in Bank literaturesconceives of knowledge as objective and uni-versal, as a technical entity that can be movedin a linear way unchanged from place to place,and in so doing separates the conception of

knowledge from politics and context.

IV Post-rationalism

While there is a wide-ranging literature criticiz-ing the rationalist approach to knowledge indevelopment, most notably in post-develop-ment and anthropological scholarship (see, forexample, Hobart, 1993; Ferguson, 1994;Escobar, 1995; Moore, 1996), this literatureoften stops short of developing alternativeways of conceiving knowledge and learning. Inthis review, I attempt this by exploring literatureemphasizing the social and constructive char-acter of knowing and learning. In the field oforganizational learning, for instance, some havereferred to a quiet revolution in organizationaltheory (Bruner and Haste, 1987, cited inGherardi and Nicolini, 2000: 330). These alter-natives propose that knowledge has the follow-ing characteristics (Gherardi and Nicolini,



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2000): it is situated in systems of ongoing prac-tices; it is relational and mediated by artefacts;it is always rooted in a context of interactionand acquired through some form of partici-pation in a community of practice; and it iscontinually reproduced and negotiated, hence

always dynamic and provisional.For Gherardi and Nicolini (2000: 332), this

approach to knowledge prompts new ques-tions or new approaches to old and oftentaken-for-granted questions which bothecho the concerns of this review and indicatethe relevancy of literature on organizationaltheory to debates about knowledge andlearning in development: how do differentforms of knowledge travelin space and time?How is knowledge transformed by the

process of its circulation? What form doesthis circulation take? Who are the agents whocirculate knowledge and appropriate it? Howare local practices shaped by the interactionbetween situated knowledge and formalizedknowledge? How is knowing constructed and

sustained in practice? My argument is thatone effective route into these and other ques-tions is to conceive knowledge and learning asproduced through translation.

This review builds on work that offers

alternatives to a rationalist approach that wemight broadly refer to as post-rationalist.Post does not refer to a specific period oftime but to perspectives critical of rationalistapproaches over time. My intention here isnot to suggest that there is a simple binarybetween rationalism and post-rationalism.There are overlaps between the two differentsets of positions that I explore in this review,and it is, of course, possible to hold views thatare both rationalist and otherwise. What Iwant to do is highlight a set of positions thatactively work against a view of developmentknowledge as an objective and universalsolution that can be conceived unproblemat-ically as separate from context and politics.Here, post-rationalist emphasizes the socio-material construction of knowledge, thespatial relationality of knowledge, and theimportance of practices.

Translation comes originally from the workof Michel Serres (1974) and involves creatingconvergences and homologies by relating thingsthat were previously different (Gherardi andNicolini, 2000: 333). Latour uses translation torefer not to a shift from one vocabulary to

another, from one French word to one Englishword, for instance, but to mean displacement,drift, invention, mediation, the creation of a linkthat did not exist before and that to somedegree modifies the original two(1999: 179). Achain of translation refers to the many stepsthrough which knowledge is produced (Latour,1999: 311). The process of translation changesto varying extents not just the forms of know-ledge but the people and places that come intorelation with knowledge. Rather than focusing

simply on the question of whether knowledgeremains the same or not, it focuses attention onthe multiple forms and effects of knowledge.

Translation challenges the diffusion model(of epidemiological origin) that traces move-ment as innovation4 (Latour, 1986; Alter,

2002; Brown, 2002). While the diffusionmodel focuses on travel as the product of theaction of an authoritative centre transmittingknowledge, translation focuses on travel asthe product of what different actors do with

objects (statements, orders, artefacts, prod-ucts, goods, etc.) (Gherardi and Nicolini,2000: 335). This draws attention to theimportance of various forms of intermedi-aries, and promotes two relational ontolo-gies: one, the importance of relationshipsbetween the near and far in producingknowledge; two, the importance of materialsin producing knowledge (Amin andCohendet, 2004). Translation is open to thepossibility of varying degrees of stability andflux: it is not the case that every encountermust always involve change, nor is it the casethat every encounter must always involve therecreation of a periphery in the image of acentre. Taking translation as a central con-cept, the next section will clarify where apost-rationalist approach to knowledge andlearning in development leaves conceptssuch as information, knowledge and learning.

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This will then pave the way for a discussion oflearning in development, focusing on theWorld Bank and SDI. I outline a broadly castpost-rationalist perspective to knowledge andlearning that insists from the start thatknowledge is situated, socio-material, formed

through practices and often political. I useSDIs learning initiatives as an examplebecause this network marks a generally dis-tinct conception of knowledge and learningand offers an often different set of learningpractices from those of the World Bank.

V Information, knowledge and

learning: the role of translation

While there is significant and necessary over-lap between concepts such as information,

knowledge and learning, elucidation is impor-tant because they point to different processes.I will draw mainly but not exclusively on liter-ature exploring situated knowledges and sociallearning in organizations as well as recentdevelopment literature and practice.

1 Information and knowledge

In the 1999 World Development Report,knowledge and information are often usedinterchangeably. Incomplete knowledge is

posed as an information problem(World Bank,1999: 1). Ostensibly, information is distin-guished from knowledge in terms of knowledgegapsand information problems. A knowledgegap is the unequal distribution of know-howabout, for instance, nutrition or software,within and between countries. An informationproblem is incomplete knowledge of attributes for instance, the quality of a product or credit-worthiness of a firm (World Bank, 1999).Knowledge gaps and information problems blurinto one another (Power, 2003: 186). There islittle reflection on how information is convertedinto knowledge or vice versa, or how learningoccurs in practice. Key questions go unexam-ined. What happens when informationbecomes knowledge? How does informationget used? How does learning occur?

Some rudimentary insights begin to prob-lematize the Banks rationalist approach to

information and knowledge. Information refersto data or facts that can be readily communi-cated. Knowledge can be distinguished frominformation as the sense that people make ofinformation (Hovland, 2003: 20). Informationis interpreted in multiple ways and has multiple

effects. Given that the places informationmoves through are generally different, it islikely that the knowledge that results and whatit does will be to some extent different. Forinstance, Power (2003: 187) asks: How is thesame information viewed differently by, say, agovernment official as opposed to a commu-nity activist?Mehta (1999: 151; see also 2001)argues that the Banks conception operateswith a very narrow and reductionist notion ofknowledge which ignores the dynamic and plu-

ral aspects shaping knowledge production andgeneration.

A post-rationalist approach to the conver-sion of information to knowledge begins fromthree starting points: that knowledge isformed through interaction, that knowledge issituated and that knowledge has two broadforms tacit and codified (or explicit). First,knowledge is socially produced. Various formsof interaction amongst individuals and organ-izations, from formal meetings to chats over

coffee and through e-mails, contribute tomaking sense of information. For SDI, forexample, knowledge is a product of social,cultural, economic and political conditions.Knowledge is conceived as embedded in thelives and experiences of the poor themselves.For instance, knowledge about potentialhousing in the construction of model houses isconceived as emerging from peoples sharedexperiences of constructing, reconstructingand adapting informal shacks (Patel andMitlin, 2001: 18; 2002). Second, knowledge issituated. For Nonaka et al. (2000: 7), thismeans knowledge is context-specific. It isalways dependent on particular times andspaces. It is, then, associated with identityand belief: Information becomes knowledgewhen it is interpreted by individuals and givena context and anchored in the beliefs andcommitments of individuals (Nonaka et al.,



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2000: 7). That development knowledges areimbued with values and context is, of course,part of the reason they are so frequentlypoliticized. If knowledge is justified belief (Nonaka et al., 2000: 7), then particulardevelopment discourses are ways of thinking

and doing that provide that justification.Discourses legislate what kinds of knowledgeand information are valuable. We can talk ofknowledge as justified belief because of theregulation of information and knowledgethrough enrolment into particular ways ofseeing and doing, or regimes of truth. Regimesof truth have the effects of framing prob-lems, which involves defining what are prob-lems and what are not. Development issuesare constructed, regulated and interpreted

through discourses (Ferguson, 1994; Escobar,1995), from those on good governance(Masujima, 2004) to those on self-help.Given that discourses render knowledge,events and institutions in a particular way,they militate against alterity to some extent.

Discourses hold stability and flux in a constanttension, which can create a paradox for thosecommitted to learning initiatives in develop-ment. For example, there is a discourse in SDIemphasizing poor peoples knowledge,

whereby poor peoples knowledge is framedas a more valuable form of developmentknowledge than other forms.

The situatedness of knowledge drawsattention to the spatialities of knowledge:knowledge is always situated and because ofthis partiality it is always multiple. It is alsoterritorialized through various forms of inclu-sion and exclusion, meaning that it can be tovarying intensities in or out of the properspaces (Law, 2000). The notion of situatedknowledgehas been developed most notablyby Haraway (1991). She underlined partialityby focusing on the embodied nature andcontingencies of knowledge production.Thrift (1998: 303) writes of the need foran irreducible ontology that thinks not ofKnowledge but of an archipelago of situatedknowledges. While situated, this knowledgeis also mobile: it is formed not simply in place

but through multiple knowledges and infor-mations that run through various spaces andpathways. For example, discourses of socialcapital may be framed by the World Bank(Fine, 2000; Harriss, 2002; McNeill, 2004),but the ways in which social capital is con-

ceived and practised on the ground is notsimply the product of the Bank as an authori-tative centre. Rather, it is a relation betweenBank discourses, local agencies, local circum-stances and priorities, and so on.

Third, knowledge is of two broad forms:tacit and codified. Codified or explicit know-ledge can be expressed in formal and systemiclanguage and shared in the form of data, scien-tific formulae, specifications, manuals andsuch like (Nonaka et al., 2000: 7). This

includes development statistics, reports andrecommendations in the form of, for example,international best practices (Tomlinson,2002). Tacit knowledge is deeply rooted inaction, procedures, routines, commitment,ideals, values and emotions: it is difficult to

communicate and does not travel well (Nonakaet al., 2000: 7). Just as information can beconverted into knowledge, so tacit knowledgecan be converted to explicit knowledge,although [tacit] knowledge sometimes resists

(Gherardi, 2000: 213) and becomes sticky(von Hippel, 1994). Knowledge is primarilytacit, as often unknown and pre-cognitivecompetence-to-act. Both forms are comple-mentary and essential in knowledge creation(Nonaka et al., 2000: 8; Amin and Cohendet,1999, 2000, 2004). However, the tacit-codifieddistinction, while useful, does not exhaust therange of knowledges that play a role in the con-stitution, operations and impacts of develop-ment. It tends to ignore, for instance, symbolicand expressive knowledge (Allen, 2002). A dif-ferent set of development knowledges, thosebased on senses, emotions and feelings, play arole in the formation and communication ofknowledge (see Allen, 2002), writing abouteconomic knowledges). For example, in SDI,solidarity plays a role in the formation andmovement of knowledge, and in what particu-lar forms of knowledge come to represent.

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2 Knowledge as practice

Gherardi (2000: 212) argues that among themanifold conversations [from Marxist inspiredperspectives to actor network theory] now inprogress on the theme of knowing and organ-izing, there is one that has an emergent iden-

tity centering on the idea of practice. Theattention to practice collapses traditionaldichotomies that separate, for example,knowing from acting, mental from manualand abstract from concrete, that continue tocontour ontologies of knowledge (Wenger,1998: 48).

Practice connects knowledge withdoing, pointing to the work, or fabrication,involved in knowing (Gherardi, 2000). If wereject the functionalist view of knowledge as

static, bounded and fixed, and argue insteadfor a view of knowledge as social, then thepractices through which knowledge is formedare brought into view. This fabrication is notsocial in the sense of just consisting of peo-ple, but always already social and material.

Knowledge production is a process of hetero-geneous engineering (Law and Hassard,1999; Thrift, 2000) and requires an ontologi-cal relational materialism. A whole range ofmaterials, from documents to infrastructures,

make a difference in the production andmovement of development knowledge.A focus on practice facilitates the bringing

together of ostensibly different modes ofknowledge production. One example here isthe attempt by Nonaka et al. (2000: 67) tobring the ontological and epistemologicaldimensions together in a spiral model ofknowledge creation which insists that theprocess is dialectic. The spiral goes throughseemingly antithetical concepts such as orderand chaos, micro and macro, part and whole,mind and body, tacit and explicit, self andother, deduction and induction, creativity andcontrol, body and mind, emotion and logic,and action and cognition. Attention to thepractices of knowledge production helpsbrings together these disparate notions, andinvolves collapsing modernist ontological andepistemological divisions of knowledge.

For SDI, knowledge is based on practice(Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, 2000: 4).Practice in SDI refers both to participation inregular activities, such as daily savings, andparticipation in less regular activities, such ashouse modelling and enumerations, that cre-

ate knowledge. The emphasis on experienceand practice positions knowledge as producedthrough the everyday interactions betweenpeople and objects (housing materials, docu-ments, maps, savings books and so on), andstands in contrast to the disembedded andabstracted conceptualization of knowledgedeployed by the World Bank. The next sec-tion will explore the notion of learningthrough participation in practice more fully. Adiscussion of learning as it is conceived in the

Bank and SDI then follows.

3 Learning as participation in

practices

Learning at the organizational level is oftenportrayed using three feedback loops knownas single-, double- and triple-loop learning.Wilson (2002: 220), writing in reference tomainstream development, elaborates:

In single-loop learning, only the practical tasksmight be modified in light of knowledge

capture. In double-loop learning the definitionof what the practical tasks should be ischallenged. In triple-loop learning, theknowledge captured is used to improve theeffectiveness of how it might be captured infuture, via the evaluation of the appraisalprocess. This last is often referred to aslearning how to learn.

While providing a useful overview, wemight question the extent to which suchinstrumental accounts are able to adequatelyappreciate learning as situated and social,despite references to knowledge as inter-preted through culture. Wenger (1998: 4), inhis influential study of firms, Communities ofpractice, focuses on learning as social participa-tion: [A] process of being active participants inthe practices of social communities and consti-tuting identities in relation to these communi-ties. For Wenger (1998), knowing is the



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ability to competently participate in the prac-tices of a community. Learning as a practicehas two aspects for Wenger: experience andregimes of competence. New experiences canlead to new competences and vice versa.Group members have to catch-up to get to

grips with new skills introduced by new mem-bers (competences driving experience), andchanging events may require the developmentof new skills (experience driving competences).This view defines learning not as a linear addi-tion of information or knowledge but as atransformation of knowing(1998: 139): learn-ing can be characterized as a change in thealignment between experience and compe-tence, whichever one of the two takes the leadin causing realignment at any given moment.

For Lave and Wenger (1990) and Wenger(1998, 2000) learning involves strengtheningthe practices of communities and the abilitiesof individuals to participate in those practices.Contu and Willmott (2000: 274) point to thisfocus as an important shift from the question

what knowledge is objectively true? to whatunderstanding is intersubjectively valuable?.This brings into view the situatedness of par-ticular kinds of knowledge and learning, andthe ways in which the privileging of particular

types of knowledge and learning is inflectedby and produces certain types of politics.Participation in practices, then, is important inlearning, and this process is mutually consti-tutive with the formation of social collectives.

Learning is influenced through the forma-tion of a constellation of communities of prac-tice (Wenger, 1998: 127). Using translation,Amin and Cohendet (2004) have describedthis process as a distanciated sociology oflearning which asserts that relational or socialproximity involves more than simply physi-cally being there, and that indeed there areincreasingly new ways of being there(includ-ing through e-mail or videoconferencing). Forexample, Allen (2000: 28) has written:

The translation of ideas and practices, asopposed to their transmission, are likely toinvolve people moving to and through localcontexts, to which they bring their own blend

of tacit and codified knowledges, ways of doingand ways of judging things. There is no onespatial template through which associationalunderstanding or active comprehension takesplace. Rather, knowledge translation involvesmobile, distanciated forms of information asmuch as it does proximate relationships.

Rather than a single spatial template, whatemerges is a complex spatial ecology that isalert to the near and far, the possessed andpractised, the role of competences and com-munities (Amin and Cohendet, 2004: 110,111). More broadly, and following Urry(2004), we need to be attentive to a wholerange of mobilities in knowledge creation,including those that produce face-to-faceinteraction that most potent and powerful

medium of communication and other inter-related modes of communication includingmail, phone calls, faxes and the internet. Forthe urban poor, the spatial extent of these dif-ferent modes of communication, while var-ied, is highly restricted. Membership of SDI,of constellations of communities of practice,offers possibilities for stretching and refiguring

these spatialities, and for subverting in smallways the dominance of domains of nationaland transnational learning by development

consultants. The image of an open constella-tion of learning, however, is restricted by arationalizing of the kinds of learning that areprivileged.

All of the processes discussed under theparticular umbrella of post-rationalism out-lined in this section are driven by translation.Information is converted to knowledge thoughtranslation, as is knowledge to learning, andthe discursive framing of development prob-lems and solutions is a continual process oftranslation. The inclusions and exclusions ofknowledge throw the politics of learning intosharp relief, as the example of how learningoften occurs in World Bank projects reveals. Inthe next section, I will explore these projectsand contrast them with SDIs commitment tolearning-by-doing, drawing on examplesfrom exchanges, daily savings, and modelhouse and toilet construction.

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VI The learning organization?

In World Bank discourses, learning is assumedto be incidental an inevitable by-product ofknowledge transmission. It is a view of learn-ing in terms of the transmission, circulationand appropriation of information and knowl-

edge (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000: 329).Furthermore, the kinds of knowledge thatcan contribute to learning about developmentare limited by an adherence in institutions likethe World Bank to Official Views. For DavidEllerman (2002: 286), Economic Advisor tothe Chief Economist at the Bank, the Bank isa development Church in which new learn-ing at the expense of established OfficialViews is not encouraged. Writing aboutbranded knowledge as dogma, Ellerman

(2002: 286) argues:The Church or party model fits perfectly withthe standard dissemination or transmission-belt methodology of knowledge-baseddevelopment assistance. The agency believes itholds the best knowledge for developmentand is to transmit it to the recipients in thedeveloping world through various forms of aid-baited proselytisation.

Coyle (2001), in her study of the WorldBank and the IMF, has similarly found that

that multilaterals have a need to project animage of having the right answers andmaintaining a consensual official line. TheChurch or party model that Ellermandescribes reflects the particular ways in whichthe Bank frames development problems andsolutions. Attention to how developmentproblemsand solutions are framed perhapsmost starkly reveals the politics of translation,and underlines that the Banks rationalist con-ception of knowledge and learning amountsto an attempt to remove politics from knowl-edge. Stone (2003) draws attention to how abroad post-Washington discursive consensus,advocating open trade regimes and variousforms of pro-capitalist growth strategies toreduce poverty, frames the kinds of knowl-edge and information that should be used andpromoted in the Global DevelopmentNetwork (GDN) because it acts as a regime

of truth. For example, the GDN often high-lights pro-market development examples andits 2003 Global Development Awards weregiven to research and policies that were pro-market (Global Development Network,2003). Not only does this entail the exclusion

of alternative knowledges and positions, italso entails the privileging of particular formsof indigenous knowledge that are deemedmarketable. For instance, writing aboutIndian handicrafts and African music, Fingerand Schuler (2004: 3), of the AmericanEnterprise Institute and the World Bank,respectively, suggest that indigenous knowl-edges that are deemed not commerciallyviable should not be valued on the same levelas those that are. On a different but related

register, Mehta (1999) argues that the Banksespousal of an undifferentiated and unchang-ing knowledge is false and potentially danger-ous. She argues that the Bank needs torecognise the multiple and differentiated[gender, class, caste, etc.] forms of knowledge

and knowing and the socio-political contextswithin which they are located, constantly con-tested and re-created (Mehta, 1999: 160).

The tendency to applydevelopment solu-tions is bound up with the timescale of main-

stream development projects, which putspressure on strategies to be completed in ahurried cycle of two or three years (Mawdsleyet al., 2002). Ellerman warns against the self-reinforcing lock-in between developmentagencies and their client countries (2002:289), whereby learning about problems is pre-vented by advice and help from a powerfuloutsider and an eagerness by local policy-makers to jump to a ready-made solution. Thisrage to conclude(Ellerman, 2002: 289) oftenleads to an espousal of best practices a ten-dency based not on any methods resemblingsocial science but on a bureaucratic need tomaintain elite prestige by having an answerfor the client(Ellerman, 2002: 289).

Moving towards a learning organisation(Ellerman, 2002: 291) requires a recasting ofinternational development agencies such asthe World Bank away from an adherence to



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set views and a paternalistic model of teach-ing, towards a two-way learning process:If the development agency can move beyondthe Church or party model to an open learningmodel, then it can also move from standardknowledge dissemination or transmission-belt

methodology towards knowledge-basedcapacity building. Ellerman echoes Freire(1970) in casting learning as a way of creatingpedagogical and social transformations, ratherthan an attempt to create linear knowledgeadditions. This is rooted in a Socratic learningtradition of intellectual duelling in which devel-opment is an ongoing mutual engagementrather than preconceived and predetermined.Such an engagement, however, must counterthe unequal power relations that contour

Bankclient relations.In contrast to the Banks official position,

SDI argues that knowledge necessarily changesas it moves. There is frequent comment by SDIleaders that knowledge cannot be dissemi-nated in a linear and instrumental way, but that

it always changes.5 Knowledge and social con-ditions are perceived as changing through theinteraction of different groups from differentcountries. The Asian Coalition for HousingRights (ACHR), an SDI partner, has com-

mented on the mutually transforming relation-ship between knowledge and place (2000: 14):Things which might start out looking alike negotiating strategies, house designs, creditmanagement systems, land-sharing models,community contracts always get changed,adapted when they move around. Writingabout horizontal exchanges, ACHR (2000: 14)assert that knowledge must change in travel:[E]xchange is not a means for transferringspecific solutions solutions have to be specificto conditions in a given place .. . [exchangeinvolves] tools [for example, enumeration,exhibition, daily savings] for finding solutions.The discourse of best practicethat circulatesmainstream development is treated with cau-tion. ACHR (2000: 10) instead argue that thetravelling of knowledge is messier because itbecomes caught up with the particularities ofplace: Peer learning through exchange is about

as far removed from this best practice thinkingas you can get. Its perhaps a bit messier, a bitless photogenic. Similarly, the members of theIndian chapter of the network (Patel et al.,2001: 51), argue that SDIs activities are notabout projects and best practicesbut about

processes and evolving strategies that extendfar beyond the standardized three-year projectcycle, and that prioritize local circumstancesand struggles.

The most frequent way in which learning isreferred to in SDI is in terms of learning-by-doing in groups (ACHR, 2000; Patel andMitlin, 2001; SDI, 2003). Learning is conceivedas taking place in situ (Homeless International,2000: 7). Learning occurs through an immedi-ate immersion in the ongoing projects of the

host community (Appadurai, 2002: 41). Thisimmersion can be any of a whole range ofactivities, such as an enumeration, exhibitionor dialogue with local state officials. Forinstance, Appadurai (2002: 41) states thatexchange activities range from scavenging in

the Philippines and sewer digging in Pakistan towomens savings activities in South Africa andhousing exhibitions in India.

Learning-by-doing is an explicitly socialaffair in SDI: learning occurs through interac-

tion with people and participating in the prac-tices of a group. Wenger (1998: 45) definescommunities of practice (COP) as createdover time by the sustained pursuit of a sharedenterprise. Knowing, for Wenger (1998: 137),is the ability to participate in the practice ofthe community. COPs are autonomousgroups that are self-organizing and share amutual commitment to a community, builtaround activities commonly understood andcontinually renegotiated by its members.Local SDI members contain COPs. COPsemerge not necessarily along organized groupboundaries, but through interaction betweenparticular people. Thus, within the Indian SDIgroup, there are sub-groups that form COPs,such as the group of four women who updatethe manual ledgers on daily savings, or thegroup that conducts daily savings rounds. SDIis not a single COP, but a constellation of

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COPs with varying forms and strengths ofrelationship with one another. Learning inCOPs is a function of the alignment betweenexperiences and competences. This dialectic ishelpful for understanding how learning aboutthe practicalities of, for example, daily savings

and housing construction occurs in SDI.Exchanges are a means through which the

poor can reflect on their own experiences,become involved in practices in a given placeand develop competences. Exchanges areone of the ways in which, Patel et al. (2000:399) claim, the poor learn how to participatein their own development. This is learningthrough constellations of COPs. For instance,in Bangalore, one member of the Indian mem-ber of SDI I spoke to said that exchanges had

taught her how to do savings. The kind ofcompetences she was referring to includedthe daily practice of savings, such as gettingindividual passbooks to members, arranginggroups of around 50 people into collectionareas, and drawing up and compiling manual

records. One practical example she gave wasthe use of colour-coded money depositboxes for example, green for Rs. 1 or red forRs. 2 that helps organize the scheme andmake it accessible to slum dwellers. In this

instance of a stabilized translation, learningoccurs through the experience of one groupdriving the competences of another. Thesecompetences are, in turn, altered throughexperience. This occurs, for example, throughgroups mediating knowledge for their ownplaces. For example, groups may draw on theorganizational form of daily savings but learnthat in practice it is more fitting in their ownplace to have weekly or monthly savings thandaily savings because of earning patterns.This is the case in Hyderabad, India, and inSDI areas in South Africa and Thailand.

The driving of competence through expe-rience new and old indicates that learningis uncertain. New experiences, such asparticipation in a model house exhibition, canlead to competences in construction. Oneexample is the early experimentation withhousing construction in South Africa following

exchanges with the Indian Alliance. Newexperiences led to new competences, andgroups were organized through social learn-ing. Leaders of the South African NGOinvolved Peoples Dialogue wrote that dur-ing a house-modelling exhibition: By the time

it came to assembly the four of us [fromPeoples Dialogue] were on the sidelines. Themembers of the community were in charge ofthe house modelling, giving advice, voicingdisagreement, actively discussing the kind ofhouses they would like to live in (A copy isavailable from Peoples Dialogue by requestfrom http://www.utshani.org.za/). Housemodelling is a form of learning that is at oncesocial, practical and material. Modelling is anexample of learning-by-doing, marked by the

development of new competences throughnew experiences.

SDIs approach to learning is closer to theimage of a learning organization than thatwhich the Bank would claim for itself. TheBanks insistence that global knowledge can

be applied to different contexts as a solutionmilitates against learning, while for SDI learn-ing is an ongoing process of working in prac-tice, through groups of people working withmaterials. This is not to say that SDI has an

open-ended commitment to learning. Indeed,SDI frames its mode of learning through a dis-course of self-management that reflects anentrepreneurial notion of the poor and socialchange, in the process marginalizing differentmodes of development intervention.However, SDIs approach to learning as, first,a process of transformation rather than trans-mission, and second, as a process of learning-by-doing in groups with materials, illustrates apost-rationalist perspective of learning.Comparing the different approaches of theBank and SDI highlights the need to take seri-ously how learning is conceived and practisedin development.

VII Conclusion

While there has been some problematizing ofdifferent types of knowledge, and of the rela-tionship between knowledge and information



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in development studies, there has been littleattention paid to the ontological and epistemo-logical basis of knowledge. SDIs conception ofknowledge and learning represents an alterna-tive politics of knowledge from that of main-stream development, which frames knowledge

and learning through a neoliberal post-Washington consensus. In SDI, poor peoplesknowledge is placed at the centre of develop-ment, creating space for pedagogic learning. Indoing so, SDI does not exclude knowledgefrom outside the immediate settlement andcity. Indeed, while local knowledge, learningand struggle are the focus of energy for SDImembers, knowledge, learning and struggle areall informed to varying extents by transna-tional engagement. For many SDI member

groups, privileging the knowledge of the poorneed not involve excluding knowledge fromoutside: indeed, they often actively seek toengage with outside knowledge, while simul-taneously arguing that this knowledge must bedriven by other groups of the urban poor in

other settlements rather than by professionalexperts. In SDI, learning has no single spatialtemplate, and knowledge is not divorced fromits social or political contexts.

None of this means that SDI stands as a

simple counterpoint to the World Bank, withthe former always post-rationalist and thelatter always rationalist. The two sets ofperspectives explored in this review are notopposite, but different, and individuals at theBank and SDI are, of course, capable of simul-taneously holding versions of both sets of per-spectives. On a similar register, none of this isto romanticize SDIs work indeed, there arecertainly critics of the politics of its knowl-edge initiatives (McFarlane, 2004). Rather,my concern here is to use the SDI analysis asa means for developing and demonstratingthe use of a post-rationalist approach toknowledge and learning in development.

My intention has not been to suggest thatthere is a straightforward binary betweenrationalist and post-rationalist. Instead, Ihave sought to highlight a set of positions thatactively work against a view of development

knowledge as an objective and universal solu-tion that can be conceived unproblematicallyas separate from context and politics. Far fromtravelling in a linear way, knowledge alwayschanges as it moves. Knowledge travels byalways undergoing translation. Materials are

important in the travelling of knowledge: forexample, model houses travel through SDI,and daily savings materials influence the con-ception and form of savings in different places.The relationality of space is also important inthe travelling of knowledge. The mixing ofdifferent spaces creates new and shiftingalignments of competence and experience inthe learning process; learning occurs through acomplex spatial ecology of near and far.

There is a need for greater sophistication in

understanding the complexities of knowledgeand learning and the relationship betweentravel, knowledge and place in development,because the ways in which these develop-ment rubrics are conceived has consequencesfor development practices. For instance, the

tendency in knowledge for development con-ceptions to privilege knowledge in line withneoliberalism, and to marginalize the knowl-edge of local people, has implications for theways in which development practice pro-

ceeds. It has implications, for example, for thetypes of knowledge for development projectsthat are funded by donors (Ellerman, 2002).

Instead, we might argue for a focus on theknowledge of local people and for local poli-tics, and for geography as central rather thanperipheral. This does not mean that, forinstance, indigenous knowledge should neces-sarily be privileged over outside or differentknowledge. Rather, I would argue for anapproach to knowledge for development thatinvolves the often difficult task of negotiatingdifferent situated knowledges, such as indige-nous knowledge, the position of a donor orstate body on a given issue, and so on. Thisrequires critical reflection on the power rela-tions of different agents such as the WorldBank relative to, for example, community-based organizations. It also requires us toreflect on the situatedness of Western

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knowledge, often constructed as andassumed to be universally applicable, and tostrive to recognize other ways of knowing.Following Briggs and Sharp (2004), thisrequires more than a simple liberal recogni-tion of the views of the poor; it requires a rad-

ical attention to the different ways in whichthe poor know, experience and understanddevelopment. This approach to knowledgefor development requires a critical perspec-tive on some key questions, such as: how areknowledge and learning being conceptualizedin a given situation? From where has knowl-edge originated? Is knowledge relevant?Who decides whether it is relevant? How canit be used (without simply trying to follow theoriginal)? How is it integrated with other

forms of knowledge? How does it relate toquestions of power and autonomy? Howdoes learning take place in practice?

Through examination both of mainstreamdevelopment and SDI as a development alter-native, a post-rationalist perspective has hope-

fully been shown to be useful for analysing theconception and creation of knowledge andlearning in development. One productivemeans for advancing these debates in develop-ment studies is through dialogue with per-

spectives emerging from organizationaltheory. A post-rationalist perspective empha-sizes: the crucial role of practices in knowledgecreation and learning, the importance of con-ceiving learning as a social process; the need torecognize spatial relationality in knowledgecreation rather than emphasizing an in-here(local) out-there (global) ontology of knowl-edge creation; the need to recognize theinherent material nature of knowledge cre-ation; and most importantly the need to rec-ognize that conceptions of knowledge andlearning are often highly political, whetherfrom the World Bank or SDI.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was supported byan Economic and Social Research Councilstudentship (award number R42200034505).I am grateful to Harriet Bulkeley, Emma

Mawdsley and Gordon MacLeod for valuablecomments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes1. Often through Information Communication

Technologies (ICTs) see Chapman and

Slaymaker (2002), Wilson (2002) and WorldBank (1999).

2. By mainstream development I am referring

to international development agencies, includ-

ing (and not withstanding the differences

between) multilaterals and bilaterals.

3. In this review, ontologyrefers to understand-

ings of what constitutes reality and episte-

mology refers to understandings of what and

how we know.

4. See, for example, Hagerstands (1968) influen-

tial formal and instrumental model of innova-

tion diffusion (Agnew, 1979).

5. See SDI (2003), ACHR (2000), Patel and

Mitlin (2001), Homeless International (2001),

special issue ofEnvironment and Urbanization

(2001).

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